


Negotiation

by Twyd



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Denial of Feelings, Fluff, Handcuffs, Kidnapping, M/M, Memories, Negotiations, Slash, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twyd/pseuds/Twyd
Summary: Shizuo kidnaps Izaya and insists they try to talk like adults.
Relationships: Heiwajima Shizuo/Orihara Izaya
Comments: 20
Kudos: 238





	1. Chapter 1

Izaya wakes up with his head slumped over his knees, hands behind his back. It takes him a while to fully come to, as if he were hungover, or ill. He tries to tug his arms forward into a normal position, before he realises they are…stuck. He lifts his head slowly. He appears to be on the floor of someone’s bedroom, tied to the bedpost. He looks around – a small apartment, nothing girly, a few photo frames on a unit by the door, but not at an angle he could make out. The informant gives an experimental wriggle, but unsurprisingly it doesn’t get him far. After a moment he clears his throat.

“Mr or Mrs Kidnapper…?” he calls. “I’m awake now, if you wanted to interrogate me or something?”

Footsteps. Izaya waits, tense with anticipation, until a familiar figure fills the door. He bursts out laughing.

“Shizu-chan! For a minute there I almost thought I was in trouble.”

Shizuo doesn’t respond. He stands in the doorway with his face set. He is in his normal bartender suit, and doesn't look any more livid at Izaya's existance than normal. 

“How’d you manage this?” Izaya prompts, giving another wriggle. “You must have had some help, ne? Seems pretty intelligent to have been pulled off all on your own.”

Secretly, he’s furious. He and Shizuo were equals, whether they liked each other or not. Shizuo having the gall to do something like this, even if he paid for it or had been helped/encouraged into it by someone else, was not right.

“Hello?” Izaya snaps, when the former bartender doesn’t respond. He should keep his cool and laugh at whatever Shizuo has in mind, but part of him can’t help feeling uneasy. He hopes Shizuo hasn’t had a death in the family or something, and is going to finally kill Izaya before taking his own life. “Do you have anything to say? Or has someone done this as a gift, and dropped my helpless self off without your awareness?”

“I did it,” Shizuo says, speaking for the first time. He comes into the room and sits down a little distance away from the informant, crossing his legs on the carpet. He does not look violent, not yet. That almost makes it worse. Izaya does not know how he looks exactly, and thus cannot read him.

“What did you do exactly?” Izaya prompts, trying to recall the last thing he remembered. “Spike my tea? Come in my room at night?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Shizuo says infuriatingly, shrugging. “But as an informant, you should really be more careful.”

“This has never happened to me before, Shizu-chan.”

“So I guess that’s made you sloppy.”

Izaya glares. “So, here we are. You’d think your monstrous strength would be an advantage enough in any kind of fight, but no, you insist on my being completely helpless as well.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“No? Then do tell. Or am I supposed to guess my way out of this?”

Shizuo pauses again. This also is unnerving. It is normally Izaya who is cool, in control. Now it is he who is losing it while Shizuo thinks through his words. He speaks carefully now.

“I want to talk."

Izaya’s eyebrows jump. “Talk?” he smirks.

“Yeah. Everyone I know has been telling me to do it for years. And I just thought, y’know, maybe it’s time. This is never going to end otherwise, unless one of us dies or leaves town, and I don’t want to wait for that.”

Izaya stares at him. Something like rage is simmering inside, but he controls his voice, and almost manages to sound amused.

“Let me get this straight. You have kidnapped me and bound me to your bedpost, where you will keep me, where we will talk, until we’ve resolved our differences?”

“Maybe not resolve our differences,” Shizuo says quietly. “But, y’know, something. I’ve never…” Shizuo looks away, fidgeting, seemingly annoyed for the first time, but his voice stays calm. “I’ve never really talked to you before. Despite everything.”

“That’s because you’re constantly throwing large, heavy objects at me,” Izaya says at once. “Very trying circumstances to start up a conversation.”

“I was always provoked into doing that. But let’s take a step back,” Shizuo says, seeing Izaya is about to argue.

“Yes, let’s,” Izaya says. “Do you expect to be done in an hour or so? Because I don’t. And how will that work exactly? Are you going to spoonfeed me? Will I be allowed to go to the bathroom? And when the police find me, this will be a far more serious addition to your record than building damage, Shizu-chan.”

“When the police find you?” Shizuo repeats, sounding curious. “Who’s gonna report you missing? You live alone, your secretary doesn’t like you much, your clients can find other informants if you don’t pick up their calls, your electricity and whatever will just be shut off if you don’t pay your bills.”

Izaya glares at Shizuo, and hopes the other man cannot see he is shaking with anger.

“My sisters, for one,” he says, while hating himself for even indulging Shizuo. “I am their acting guardian whilst our dear parents our abroad. So I sign stuff for them at school when they need it, or come to get them if their sick, transfer emergency money if they lose their purses, or change a damn lightbulb in the house when one goes. That sort of thing.”

“Those sound like one-off situations,” Shizuo points out. “It sounds like they could go a couple of weeks or so without you.”

“A couple of weeks??”

Shizuo shifts. “Obviously this won’t take that long - I hope – but my point is, you’re not being missed right now.”

Izaya narrows his eyes. “Then that brings us back to my original question. How will this work logistically? Will you have to help me piss, or will I be untied just for that? What if I refuse to cooperate? What if -”

“I was really hoping it could be a bit more adult than that,” Shizuo says quickly. “I hoped it would just be this evening, maybe some time in this morning, and – and if it goes well, who knows, maybe we could speak again, like, normally, if we need to.”

“…a remarkably mature and diplomatic approach,” Izaya concedes. “Minus the kidnapping. Clearly a generic idea Celty or someone has put into your head, and you’ve interpreted it in your own way. So my next question is, in the spirit of maturity and diplomacy – and this is an obvious one – why the kidnapping? Why not just ask me?”

“You should know this,” Shizuo says. “You’d probably just laugh and walk away. Or make fun of me, and I’d lose my temper.”

“I will be making fun of you ceaselessly, don’t worry about that.”

“Also,” Shizuo says. “I wanted to show you that I’m serious about this. As much as you piss me off, I’m going to do my best to listen to your side and work things out.”

“And if I scream for help?”

Shizuo rolls his eyes. “Then I’m going to have to gag you until you’re ready to talk.”

“That doesn’t sound very productive for what you want to achieve.”

“I can wait,” Shizuo says. “And, I think, part of you must want to do this too.”

Izaya looks at him stonily.

Shizuo continues, “You have people you don’t like and people who don’t like you, but you never have trouble with anyone the way you do with me. You’ve said plenty of times how you hate watching your back every time you’re in or near Ikebukuro. All this fighting doesn’t seem your style. So, it would be in your interests as much as mine.”

Izaya wonders vaguely if Shizuo had seen Kasuka in some FBI movie or something, where he's getting all this from. Out loud, Izaya says, “You know, for a proper negotiation to be effective, we should both have an end goal.”

“We do.”

“Do we? _My_ end goal is to go home. As for you, you’ve said you want to talk, which is the process part only. I asked if you expected a reconciliation, and you said no. So what is _your_ end goal? What will get me out of this nonsense?”

“An, um, agreement, I suppose, for going forward. To avoid each other, stay out of each other’s way, to – to put anything in the past behind us so we don’t have it as an excuse for anything shitty in future.”

“You should be a novelist,” Izaya sneers. “And if I just humour you and lie, and we go back to square one once I’m free?”

“Yeah, I knew that would be a risk,” Shizuo shrugs. “I think I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying or not. But if you do fool me, at least I’ve tried. I’ll feel better for having tried.”

“So, to clarify once more,” Izaya says. “The end goal of this discussion, if you can call it that, is to come to an eventual agreement going forward that we will avoid each other and not harm or bother each other in any way?”

“In a nutshell, yeah.”

Izaya thinks for a moment. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I will not cooperate with this. If that means me being kept here tied up like a dog until my sisters have some emergency, or whatever, then so be it.”

To Shizuo’s credit, he does not lose his temper. He looks curious. “But why? Why are you so against it?”

“As if it weren’t obvious. I’ve been dragged here against my will. I’m _tied to your bedpost_ , Shizu-chan. This is worse than everything you’ve ever thrown at me. If you want a discussion, you’re letting me go and we’re doing it on agreed, equal terms, not on yours.”

“If I let you go,” Shizuo says irritably. “You’d do just that, you’d go. You’d behave even worse than you normally do in revenge, and you’d make sure there was no opportunity for a conversation like this again. It has to be like this, Izaya.”

“In that case,” Izaya says. “We are not talking. I don’t know how you planned this, but even if you gag me, I am going to bang and kick up a storm once you’re at work until your neighbours call the police.”

“I’ve taken the week off work,” Shizuo says. “Like I said, I’m serious about this.”

Izaya stares at him. Shizuo stares back, calm, a little wary, a little resigned. His fingers twitch as if craving a cigarette.

“Is there anything else?” Shizuo says now.

“Anything else what?”

“Any other reason why you might not wanna have this conversation,” he says, a little tentatively. “I don’t know, maybe you enjoy the fights.”

“I do not,” he says through his teeth.

“Well, then.” He looks at Izaya closely. “What do you wanna do?”

“I already told you.”

“You don’t want to even try, not even out of curiosity?” he says.

“I’m not interested in anything you’ve ever thought or had to say, no.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Human behaviour and its relative thought processes are most fascinating to me, yes,” he says, unsmiling. “But as we both know, you are no human.”

“Do you remember how we met?” Shizuo charges ahead anyway.

“I told you Shizuo, I’m not doing this.”

“Do you, though?”

“Of course I do,” he snaps. “You attacked me before I’d even opened my mouth.”

Shizuo nods. “Yeah, yeah I did. I, um, maybe I can’t remember what I was so pissed about but, I, uh, I’m sorry Izaya.”

“What?” he almost laughs. “Say that again.”

“I’m sorry,” he snaps. His ears are turning red, but he still forces himself calm. “I’m sorry, OK? That was something I needed to apologise for so I am. You were a shit but – no. I’m just sorry. That’s all.”

“So this is what we’re going to do, review our encounters in chronological order?”

“Just the big ones, I’d say. The important ones.”

“The big ones,” Izaya snickers. “I guess getting you run over by a truck qualifies.”

“Yes,” Shizuo says through his teeth.

“And getting you fired.”

“Yes.”

“And you expect me to apologise for each one?”

“No, I don’t expect you to apologise for anything. But I still think we should talk about it.” Shizuo runs a hand through his hair. “Man, we’re only half an hour in and we’ve barely got anywhere.”

“I did explain at the beginning all the things wrong with your methodology,” Izaya points out. “Not too mention the fact that I will not be participating. But if you’d like to continue to apologise to me for your most monstrous moments, do go ahead.”

Shizuo is quiet for a moment, thinking. “How about if I free one of your hands,” he says. “And we can have some tea.”

“Truth serum?”

“Is that actually a thing? Do you think I’d be able to afford it if it was?”

“Well, you could afford some kind of drug or other. And handcuffs, by the feel of it,” he says, wriggling.

“OK, stay like that then,” Shizuo shrugs.

Izaya closes his eyes and counts to three. He will get through this, and he will make a plan once he’s out. He will make Shizuo’s life unbearable. And maybe, if Shizuo falls for it, he can get Shizuo to divulge any past secrets or regrets in their little heart-to-heart, which would serve as valuable ammunition going forward. Izaya was happy with their current status, but as Shizuo had apparently decided to take their enmity up a notch, that was fine with him. He opens his eyes and smiles.

“Sure, make us some tea.”

Shizuo raises an eyebrow. “Thinking about getting manipulative, huh? I wondered how long it’d take you.”

“I’m thinking nothing of the sort, Shizu-chan,” Izaya counters. “I merely agreed to being allowed a more comfortable position and a cup of tea.”

Shizuo gets up and leaves the room without another word. A moment later Izaya hears the kettle whistling. He feels about the cuffs, and moves his legs around to try and gauge whether his knives are still in his pockets. He doubts it. His jacket has been removed too.

Shizuo removes with two identical white mugs in hand, absurdly dainty for a creature like him. He puts them on the little unit with the photographs by the door, and approaches Izaya slowly.

“I wouldn’t headbutt me or anything like that,” he cautions.

“I wouldn’t either, my head would probably split in two,” he quips.

Taking a key from his pocket, Shizuo frees Izaya’s right hand, and clips the remaining cuff around the bed post before he can move.

“I’m left-handed,” Izaya tells him.

“I know.” He goes back to the tea and places a cup in front of Izaya. “I think you can manage tea. It’s not like I’ve given you chopsticks.

“Wonderful.” He reaches out cautiously and takes an awkward sip. “Not that I’ll be drinking much. I don’t want to need the toilet in these circumstances.”

“About when we met…“

“Yes?” Izaya says, with a hint of resignation. “I suppose you want me to apologise for the insulting look I had on my face, or something.”

“No,” Shizuo says. His ears are getting red again. Interesting. “How did – how did you feel at the time? I mean we’re you angry or scared or what? Did it bug you that someone hated you on sight like that?”

“I honestly don’t remember, Shizu-chan. I never gave it as much thought as you apparently have.”

“Think now,” he urges.

He stares down at the tea, and casts his mind back. After a moment’s thought he shrugs. “I thought, 'wow, what a dangerous beast. I’m surprised they let it come to school.' That’s it.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“What was your question?”

“How you felt about someone hating you on sight.”

Izaya shrugs. “Not like I took it personally. You were clearly a monster who had rages at everyone, at any time, for no reason. Even if you were friends with Shinra and didn’t lose your shit with him.”

“Shinra wanted us to be friends.”

“Yes.” Izaya stiffens then. “Shinra.”

“What about him?”

He slowly raises his eyes to Shizuo’s. “He gave you the drugs to get me here. I thought you might have hit me over the head, but I’d have a splitting headache if that was the case. No, you drugged me to get me here. And who better to give you drugs than our mutual doctor friend?”

“It’s not like that, Izaya.”

“Did he know what you were planning to do?”

“Izaya –“

“Did he?”

“He knew I wouldn’t hurt you. Whatever you think of me, I’ve never killed anyone and he knows that.”

Izaya looks away.

“We discussed it,” Shizuo says. “Me, him and Celty. He wasn’t so keen – Celty had to push him quite a bit.”

“Oh, that monster could probably push him to eat his own fingers if she wanted to,” Izaya says, his voice hard. “Well, there you go. We’re not exactly BFFs, but I never thought it would come to this.“

“He thought it was a good thing,” Shizuo cuts him off. “What do you think of that? He know us both pretty well, doesn’t he?”

“He thought it was a good thing for me to be knocked out and tied up by my worst enemy?“

“He thought it would be a good thing for us to talk.”

Izaya doesn’t answer. He picks up his tea. Awkwardly, it being his right hand, he tosses it over Shizuo’s chest, who jumps back in shock.

“You little shit!”

“I should have done it earlier. It’s cooled down a little.”

Shizuo swears and takes off, presumably to change his clothes. He’s gone for a little while, perhaps to try and calm down. Or, Izaya thinks with a sudden sting, perhaps on the phone to Shinra, asking what he should do next. Maybe Shinra would give him some tips, how to talk to the strange and difficult being that was Izaya.

Izaya forces those thoughts out of his head. He will stick with his plan. He will humour Shizuo until he is released, and then he will destroy both Shizuo and Shinra’s lives.

Shizuo comes back a little later, in jeans this time and a clean blue t-shirt.

“Hope I haven’t stained the precious gift from your brother,” the informant taunts.

“Very funny.” Shizuo returns to his previous position, cross legged beside his now cold tea. “We were talking about Shinra.”

“Were we?”

“Yeah. You were pretty upset at the idea that he’d do something to hurt you.”

“Oh dear, here comes the psychoanalysis. If this is leading to some complicated theory of my jealousy over your friendship with Shinra –“

“No,” Shizuo says. “But he’s important to how we met, and he’s important to both of us.”

Izaya pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Ever thought you might be overthinking this, Shizu-chan? Some people just don’t get on. They feel it as soon as they first set eyes on each other. I suppose it’s the same principle as love at first sight, only the opposite. Some things just can’t be explained.”

“Fine, but that still doesn’t help us in how to move forward.”

“Well, what do you suggest, other than this pointless exercise of going over everything that’s ever happened between us?”

“If you were cooperating,” Shizuo grumbles. “You’d bring suggestions to the table as well. You’re the smart one. You’re the one who’s so good at reading people and situations. You would know what we should discuss and what we should try to agree to.”

“Given the circumstances, do forgive me if I’m not too enthused about this discussion.”

Izaya stretches his feet in front of him, unused to sitting still for so long. He dares let them go in reach of Shizuo before drawing them back.

“How did it make you feel when I hated you on sight?” Shizuo says insistently.

“All right, you got me," he says in an exaggerated voice. "I felt awful. I went home and cried. I couldn’t stop thinking about you and why you didn’t like me. I actually slit my wrists a couple of times –“

“How did you feel?”

“It made me feel bad, OK?” he snaps. “It annoyed me a little that you hated me on sight, before I’d done anything, before you knew the slightest fucking thing about me. That’s all.”

Shizuo breathes out. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Izaya says nothing.

“You want a break?”

“We have another ten years to get through,” Izaya remarks dryly. “I think we better get a wiggle on.”

“We don’t have to talk about every single thing, I told you.”

“What next, then?”

“Why don’t you go next? Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

Izaya giggles weakly. He wonders if Shizuo has a sticky note of prompts he’d learned off by heart.

“This is weird for me too,” Shizuo says.

“Is it?” Izaya says, sharp as a knife. “At least you can go to the bathroom or leave the room whenever you feel like it. At least you can, you know, end this thing right now if you wanted to.”

“It’s interesting to see you so mad. This is how I feel every time you do something to me, by the way.”

“Can you imagine if I’d done this to you? I don’t think we’d have made it to cups of tea. Bits of me would be strewn around the room.”

“You’d have had trouble knocking me out and tying me up,” Shizuo admits. “Did you ever think about anything like this, though? Like, if we were to talk, if we were stuck on a boat or something, what would you want to talk about?”

“If we were stuck on a boat, my approach would be to avoid talking as much as possible, to avoid pissing you off and you drowning me.”

“OK, so say Ikebukuro is the boat. I try avoiding you – not just not speaking to you, but avoiding you all together. But you still come around and you still do shit. So what do we do?”

“Sometimes I have to come to Ikebukuro for my job. I’m not changing any of my professional duties because of you, and I’m sure you wouldn’t do the same.”

“Professional duties, sure, sure. What about all those times you got me fired?”

“As a bartender,” he grits out. “You haven’t been a bartender for over a year. In your latest profession, as far as I’m aware, you haven’t been fired.”

“Because Tom’s my friend, so you’d find it more difficult to mess things up for me.”

“Take responsibility for your own life, Shizu-chan. Not everything that happens to you is my fault. And even when I do do something to you, you’re in charge of how you react. No-one’s forcing you to destroy buildings and act like a brute.”

“What would you talk about if we could talk about anything?” he insists.

Izaya closes his eyes. “I’m not cooperating.”

Shizuo sighs. “Fine. I need a break. Man, this is hard.”

“You thought it would be easy?”

“I thought you’d at least be a little logical about it. You can see what I’m trying to do.”

Izaya doesn’t deign to respond.

“You want a sandwich?”

“No.”

“Kay. I’ll make you one anyway and you can shout when you want it.”

“How lovely. My Stockholm Syndrome will be developing imminently.”

“Shut up. I’m going to watch TV for half an hour or so to calm down. Should I bring you something to watch on my laptop?”

“Yes.”

He gives Izaya a look. “I’m not going to give you my laptop. Just tell me what you want to watch and I’ll play it and put it by the door.”

“Clever you,” Izaya sighs. “In that case, I don’t want to watch anything.”

“OK.”

Shizuo leaves him alone. He could start banging on every hard surface available, but really, what was the point? He’d been getting to invested in Shizuo’s questions and his temper. He vows to laugh off everything Shizuo comes up with next. That, or take a steer on the conversation and manipulate Shizuo as originally planned.

-

Thirty minutes later, Shizuo returns. Izaya is in the same position, staring into space, looking as if he hadn’t moved since Shizuo left. Carefully, Shizuo places a glass of water near him.

“Don’t throw it this time.”

Izaya takes a few sips without looking at him.

“OK,” Shizuo says now. “You don’t wanna talk about anything that’s happened in the past. Fine with me. No point in raking everything up if it’s just gonna make us both angry. So how about going forward? If there’s anything useful we could take out of this, y’know, what do you think?”

“...I’ll stay away from you going forward,” Izaya says in a dull voice. All of a sudden he's pretty depressed. “I won’t do anything to you behind the scenes, and you won’t throw anything at me when you see me. We avoid all contact.”

Shizuo looks at him closely. “You don’t sound super happy about that.”

Izaya turns his head to him, exasperated. “I’m not super happy about any of this, Shizuo, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You’re not relieved that our lives might be about to get better?”

“The minute something goes down, you’ll think it’s me,” he snaps. “Whether it is or isn’t, that suspicion will keep flaring up, and you’ll keep attacking me, and I’ll start getting annoyed, and I’ll attack you back. It won’t end. I’m not as smart as you think.”

"That was the whole point of this discussion," Shizuo snaps. "So we can get rid of that mistrust."

"Distrust."

"Fuck you."

Izaya starts to laugh.

Shizuo slams out the drawer of his desk to find the keys.

"Forget it. This is such a waste of time. You are such a pain, someone else will probably kill you before I do anyway."

"You made it, what, an hour into your attempt to have a conversation? I applaud you for trying Shizuo, I really do."

"Yeah, I applaud me too. You're fucking impossible. I'll never be rid of you."

"I will be charging you for business losses as a result of missing client appointments today, not to mention any subsequent time I will need to take off due to trauma."

"OK." Apparently Shizuo's temper is wavering. "You said it yourself, you don't want us to start avoiding each other, so it's pointless to even attempt this discussion."

Izaya's smile fades.

"That is not quite what I said."

" _I_ said my end goal was to come to an agreement to avoid each other and stay out of each other's way for good. And you said no. You said you weren't having anything to do with such a discussion."

"Just let me go, Shizu-chan."

Shizuo approaches with the keys, kneeling before him, but still makes no move towards the cuffs.

"What do you want?" he says. "If you don't want things to get better, what the hell do you want?"

Izaya's eyes are on the keys instead of on Shizuo, as if he could will them to set him free. While he is distracted, Shizuo leans in and kisses him. One hand comes up to hold Izaya’s cheek, fingers brushing his hair. Izaya makes a little noise of surprise and catches Shizuo with his free hand, but otherwise doesn’t move.

“What are you doing?” he says as Shizuo pulls back.

“I thought, if we’d had a proper talk, that we may have got into…feelings n stuff.”

“You have feelings for me?”

“No. Well. I don’t know. Wait.” He leans around Izaya and unlocks the remaining cuff.

Izaya rubs his wrist tentatively. Then he leans into Shizuo’s space experimentally, without nearing his lips, pressing their foreheads together instead. “You just had me in cuffs, Shizu-chan,” he muses. “That was probably the best time to realise you had feelings for me.”

He hears Shizuo swallow.

“Don’t flirt. Anyone would be attracted to you when you act like that. You’ll just make things more confusing.”

Izaya pulls back a touch.

“What did you just say?”

“I said, anyone would be attracted to you when you –“

Izaya kisses him again, harder this time. “And did you not think for a moment that kissing me might make things more confusing?”

“Well, you’re free now. If you want to go off and ruin my life or plot my death, go ahead.”

Izaya doesn’t move.

“...What are you doing?”

“I told you,” the informant says. “If you approached this like an adult, sans kidnapping and handcuffs, I _might_ be up for talking.”

“Oh.” A huge smile spreads over Shizuo’s face. “I’m so glad.”

“You are?” he frowns, wrong-footed.

“Well, I didn’t want to have gone through all this for nothing. And, I think it will be useful. It has to help somehow.”

Izaya looks away and shrugs. “I’m not forgiving you for this. But while we’re here, if you had anything specifically you want to say, let’s hear it.” He turns back when Shizuo doesn’t reply, watching him squirm, and raises his eyebrows. “Not an easy conversation, ne?”

“Do you hate me?”

Izaya blinks. “What?”

“Do you hate me?”

“Well…it depends how you define hate –“

“Come on, it’s a simple question, do you hate me or don’t you?”

“…no.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Shizuo doesn’t ask for explanations.

“Do _you_ hate me?” Izaya asks in a bored tone.

Shizuo takes his time thinking about this. “I thought I did...” 

Izaya pushes himself away and gets to his feet. “Well, I think I’ll be off.”

“No, I don’t hate you.”

“Your feelings really don’t matter to me one way or the other, Shizu-chan.”

“Can you sit down? Just for five more minutes.”

He sighs, but does so. “Well?”

“Should we talk about what just happened? Maybe there’s something else we can try...?”

“Partial amnesia via Shinra’s experiments, so we can forget we both exist?”

“I don’t want to fight you any more,” Shizuo says, ignoring this. “I don’t hate you, and I don’t want you to hate me.”

“And I,” Izaya says. “Don’t want us to avoid each other. I do not want that to be the endgoal of our discussion.”

“Hm...” Shizuo leans in again.

“So.” With some difficulty, Izaya pushes him away. “Why don’t you think of a suggested solution – and of how you’ll make up to me for today – and call me when you’ve thought of something?”

“What?”

“And I’ll take the time to decide whether I still want to destroy you for what you did today, or if you’re worth keeping around.”

“But we still haven't –“

The informant knocks his hands back and stands. “And if you want a hint – not that you deserve one – keep the handcuffs in the picture. I like them.”


	2. Chapter 2

After this disastrous attempt, Shizuo doesn’t see Izaya for weeks. Literally weeks. He doesn’t even hear of him. Izaya _did_ disappear sometimes, after shit he’d started kicked off, but never for more than a few days, and never in complete silence, with no online presence. Shizuo had no idea what Izaya did in these times, whether he holed up in another apartment in another district, whether he treated himself to a nice onsen in the country, or whether he actually had a friend somewhere that nobody knew about. Wherever he is, Shizuo doesn’t see him.

One night after visiting his brother, slightly tipsy, Shizuo even gets off a stop early at Shinjuku, on the off chance of running into him, which was like going to Times Square in the hope of seeing a celebrity. After drifting between numerous bodies, signs, platforms, noise, laughter, ads, nothing, he goes home.

He had only talked to Shinra and Celty about what happened, but of course this meant, because of Shinra, that the tale had spread like wildfire, and grown to outlandish proportions in Izaya’s absence. Some thought Shizuo had finally killed him. Others thought the informant was still locked up in Shizuo’s apartment. This had made Shizuo start to steer clear of the online forums.

The silence makes him uneasy. Izaya must be plotting something in revenge. Maybe something even as elaborate as faking his own death, or harm, in order to get Shizuo into some real shit, something more concerning than property damage on his record. Shizuo had learned the hard way to never underestimate just how ridiculous the flea could be.

Another part of him – a smaller part, granted, but the worry had just as much of a squeeze in his gut – thought that the silence had a different cause. That maybe the flea was…upset in some way. That maybe Shizuo shouldn’t have kissed him. Or maybe that he should have done a better job of it, as the flea had implied.

_Keep the handcuffs in the picture. I like them._

Just remembering his voice and the way he’d said it made Shizuo’s mouth dry. And now, silence. His punishment. Izaya wasn’t the sort to get upset, as in freaked out upset, over things, so this punishment was the most likely reason for the silence, the nothingness of the past few weeks.

Whatever was coming, Shizuo hopes it will come soon.

-

Izaya works from home for a number of weeks. He cites having to catch up with ‘research’ and ‘reports’ as his reason for doing so, and Namie doesn’t argue. He had come home from the ‘incident’ with Shizuo without any external sign of agitation, but Namie had worked with him long enough to know something was up. Wisely, she didn’t ask. He is quieter than usual, and this alone is an unexpected blessing. He spends a lot of time staring into space.

Analysing. Reflecting. Strategizing his next move. What steps he should take to protect himself when all of this hit the fan, which it surely would do. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left when he had. If he had let it burn itself out naturally, maybe even in just one night or a few hours, maybe they would both feel better for it and whatever it was that hung over them would be lifted, banished forever.

Or something.

Shizuo doesn’t come round. Or call. Perhaps he was embarrassed. Or furious. Or also wondering what the hell was going on. Or perhaps expecting Izaya to waltz around Ikebukuro as he always did.

So much time passes – barely a month, but it feels longer – that Izaya is sure whatever it was was over before it had even begun. They would probably never mention it again. 

The wasted time, planning for worse case scenarios, leaves him with an almost collapsed feeling in his chest. He doesn’t like it when his plans, things he sets in motion, don’t happen. But then he hadn’t really set anything in motion.

He had waited, and he had miscalculated. Without realising it, he sighs out loud. Namie doesn’t comment.

He stands, stretches his arms over his head.

“I’m going out, Namie.”

“Did you finish your research?”

She doesn’t pause in her typing as she speaks. Slowly, Izaya lowers his arms and looks at her.

“How’s Seiji?”

She stops typing then. Meets his gaze, deadpan.

“Listen, I’m not saying anything about whatever’s upset _you_.”

He nods vaguely. He could deny it, but what was the point, it wasn’t like her opinion mattered.

“There’s onigiri in the fridge if you want some.”

“Thank you.”

She resumes typing, and Izaya resumes shutting his laptop, donning his jacket and leaving the apartment.

 _I shouldn’t have said that_ , he thinks vaguely as he shuts the door, seeing her smile as patronising, humouring, but he lets the thought drift away. No, he doesn’t care what Namie thinks.

He goes for a walk. Walking aimlessly for miles always did him good. It took about 50 minutes, longer if he went slowly or took a detour or stopped at a bookstore. He knew all the routes off by heart. As he wasn’t walking aimlessly per se. He was walking to Ikebukuro, as he always did, his feet taking him closer without his even being conscious of it. What he would do when he got there, let alone what he would do if he saw Shizuo, he had no idea.

He reaches the the slightly nicer area of Ikebukuro that housed Shinra’s place. Izaya never ran into him when he passed through, so he blinks now to see both him and Celty come out of a store, paper bags in hand. What looked like bottles of wine or sake poke out of the top. They both blink at him too.

“Oh, hi Izaya,” Shinra says cheerfully. He looks like he has somehow dipped into one of the bottles already. His cheeks are very pink.

“Hi,” Izaya says.

Unlike Shizuo, Shinra had called him a few times since the ‘incident.' Izaya had somehow forgotten that he was supposed to be mad at Shinra, and simply ignored the calls because he didn’t want to talk about it, and Shinra had given up. He remembers his anger now, but it seemed like so much effort to get worked up after not speaking to his friend for so long.

“You guys having a party?”

A look goes across Shinra’s face, and Izaya sees that the same would go across Celty’s if she had one, sees it in her body language. He understands at once.

“Oh don’t worry, I’m not inviting myself,” he laughs. He steps away to prove his words. “I was just asking. I hope you have fun.”

“No, you should come Izaya,” Shinra blurts.

Celty’s helmet is nodding. She tries to type around the bags she’s holding, doesn’t quite manage it, so instead nods more vigourously.

“Thing is, we’ve already started and, believe it or not. We ran out of booze. One of those weeks, everyone just needed it I guess.” Shinra laughs, and Izaya can see then that he is most definitely tipsy, if not outright drunk. He’s surprised they even got served, a drunken man and a biker who wouldn’t take her helmet off. Then again, this was Ikebukuro. “You might get bored, with everyone so drunk. But you should definitely come up anyway!”

“Er…”

Celty’s nodding looks genuine, somehow. Because Shinra is drunk, because his swaying and Celty’s dumb nodding is sort of endearing, Izaya finds himself saying yes. Finds himself taking one of Celty’s bags and following them to their apartment. Shinra is drunk, so he doesn’t have to worry about not asking if Shizuo is here. He doesn’t want to think about whether Shizuo’s here or not.

Shizuo’s here.

Of course he is.

It takes him a moment to realise, because the apartment is filled with so many people and so much noise. But the noise gradually dies, and he realises everyone is looking between him and someone else. Shizuo. Shizuo is staring at him, drink in hand, while Shinra, oblivious, is plucking bottles from the bag in Izaya’s hands and setting them out on the table. People start whispering.

After a moment, Shizuo turns away. He resumes his conversation with Tom. Tension lifted, everyone else turns back to their conversations too. Izaya lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. He allows Shinra to steer him to a couch where Kadota was sat, who was characteristically not drunk. He nods at Izaya gravely, and his seriousness somehow brings Izaya to life.

“Hello, Dotachin! Are you not getting drunk too?”

Izaya is not a drinker. It bores him. It is more interesting to watch others, whether they’re drunk or not, but this is his first party since probably high school, and the atmosphere is contagious. Plus he’s scared to glance in Shizuo’s direction to see if the other man is glancing in his or not, which is an unpleasant feeling. So he drinks. 

He drinks quite a bit.

No-one seems to mind him being there.

He doesn’t see Shizuo for a while. Maybe he’d left. Maybe he was making out with someone in the hallway. Did that happen at grown up parties? Probably. Shinra and Celty were dancing. They looked happy.

At some point, a girl starts chatting him up. At least, Izaya thinks that is what’s happening. Ah, Shizuo _is_ still here. He is looking right at them.

“Are you gay?”

Izaya blinks and looks at the girl. Her eyes are flat, unhostile.

“What?”

“It’s OK if you are.”

He forces himself not to glance at Shizuo again.

“I don’t know.”

This makes her laugh.

“You don't know? Haven’t you ever tried to find out?”

“…excuse me.”

He picks up his drink and escapes to the tiny balcony that a couple were just vacating.

The night air is wonderful. He had lost his jacket at some point, but the night was warm enough for him not to need it. He remembers being a teenager, hating parties and most people at them, but wanting friends and maybe a relationship and normal things.

Forgetting Shizuo, he smiles down at the city, at life, and wonders what he’d been so worried about. He’d been overthinking. He had to stop that. Life was too short and too fun. Life was-

Behind him, he hears the slide of the door.

Izaya turns to see who would dare share a balcony with Izaya Orihara. But of course.

“Hey,” Shizuo says.

“Hi.”

In an act of casualness, Izaya tries to rest his can on the balcony, only somehow misses, and it sinks into the night. He stares stupidly until he hears a vague tink. He looks up, and finds Shizuo smiling at him.

“You’re drunk.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

He was a fount of honesty today.

Shizuo comes forward to also lean on the balcony, a safe distance away. The noise of the party is distant behind the glass door. No-one else tries to join them.

“You haven’t been around,” Shizuo says.

“I’ve been very busy.”

“I thought you might be mad.”

“…hm, no. That’s your territory.”

“I’m not mad.”

“OK.”

He senses Shizuo glance at him.

“You’re not your usual chatty self today.”

Izaya isn’t. He’s drunk, he is just discovering how drunk, and he doesn’t want Shizuo to notice. It is taking a lot of his effort just to not slur his words. Why wasn’t _Shizuo_ drunk? Wasn’t he normally a bit of a drinker?

Shizuo looks at him again when he doesn’t respond. Izaya pushes off from the balcony masterfully and instead leans back into the corner of the wall next to the sliding door, which feels more secure than the balcony. When he opens his eyes, he finds Shizuo staring at him.

“I am very drunk," he explains.

Shizuo laughs. Izaya had never heard him genuinely laugh before. It sends a little rush of warmth through his stomach.

“That might make this easier.”

The world seems to move in slow motion as Shizuo kisses him. He can still hear the chatter and the terrible J-Pop behind them. People were either too drunk to notice, or he and Shizuo had entered some alternate reality in which no-one could see them and they could do whatever they wanted. He raises his arms clumsily and puts them around Shizuo’s neck, holding tight.

“…I have a bone to pick with you when you’re sober."

It takes Izaya a moment to process Shizuo's words, as first he is only conscious of the fact that the kiss is no longer happening. 

“OK.”

Shizuo tugs him forward to lean on the balcony again, closer to each other now. Izaya tips his head back.

“Look at the moon.”

Shizuo snickers again and shakes his head.

“’Look at the moon.’ You’re a funny drunk. Who knew.”

“Why aren’t _you_ drunk?”

“Because I can hold it. And I've been here longer than you.”

Izaya makes a disparaging snort, but doesn’t argue. He’s so happy, Shizuo could insult him however he liked and he wouldn’t care. He leans against the other man’s shoulder.

“You could have made this so much easier,” Shizuo says.

"Mmm," he agrees.

They enjoy the view, and don't head back inside for some time.


End file.
